In the Snow
by Belldame
Summary: She lays alone, frozen in the snow.


In The Snow

.

.

.

.

She lays on her back, in the snow, staring upwards at the heavens high above.

The sky is vast and white, uncurling like a snow globe to the edge of the world. She can no longer feel the pain of her lover's hands anymore, nor the bane of purple flowers that he left her.

What she feels, as she lays abandoned in the snow, is the nip of the ice under her fingernails, and the blood freezing in her toes.

For a brief second, she feels as if she's floating, skyward, with her lungs carrying her high above the clouds. She sees a face, the corners of a white tuff curl upwards in a grin. The sky's face expands as she falls towards it, and then shrinks, away from her, mocking her as she falls back into her body.

She tumbles in and out her own mortal tyranny several more times, before her mangled sense cry for their final rest. Her chest rises and falls, as her breath disappears into the white air. She stretches her arms, like an angel, her hand raking the snow as she brings it over her body.

She lays in a winter valley, a crown of spindly trees mark the perimeter of the plain. Naked, in the cold, vulnerable. She can no longer feel her body, and to her it is now a relief. She stops herself from picturing the bloody river, running down, staining the white snow red.

It becomes hard for her to breath. A soft wind blows a trail of icy powder over her, and it reaches her lungs and she feels tiny teeth biting into her. Snowflakes settle on her eyelashes and she flutters them away. The world blurs as she focuses on the snow's dance. She blinks, and they melt on her cheeks.

The pain in her chest exhausts her, and she closes her eyes to sleep. She realises the snow is her grave. Her body will be found, blue, lifeless, buried six feet under, sharing the tomb of the trees. She tries to think of her family, of the things she'll never be able to do again. Simple things, like eating candies, combing her hair, talking with her brother, Allen's laugh.

Oh Allen…

She's so cold…

Oh Allen…

She tries to weep, but the snow won't let her, her tears freeze on her cheeks, crystals crusting her eyes.

Her body is swallowed by snow. Her face, chest, belly and knees lay uncovered, displayed and reddened. Her cheeks chiseled by the cold. Her fingers blue. The snowflakes fall on her skin, undisturbed, solid. She no longer cares, and it is a sweet relief. The memory of the man who had caused her so much harm, while wearing the face of the man she'd loved so much, no longer touches her, harms her, enters her.

Footsteps echo in the distance, crushing the snow under their feet, and it sounds to her like a thousand, tiny little screams squished to silence under a knife.

The footsteps stop at near her body, the bruises on her navel bloom purple flowers, to be viewed by the cruel world. Lenalee opens her eyes, eyelashes frozen, lips dried purple, and stares upward at her unexpected company.

It was a Noah.

Blond hair beating in the wind, knotting and scratching his face. Grey skin uncovered, it too vulnerable to the cold. His leather pants so much darker in contrast to the white expanse behind him. He tilts his head, and there is curiosity in his eyes.

Lenalee thinks it's odd that he's here, alone. Her enemy, her _little_ enemy to keep her company in this cold world. Her little enemy that held a gun to her head. Now he stands besides her, on her white deathbed.

Her mouth curls weakly into a smile -a triumphant smile- she can no longer be hurt, she thinks. She wants him to know that, as he sees her body blue and bitten to death, she wants him to know that nothing hurts her, not anymore, and that she is now inaccessible to him. She is dying, it is not they, the Noahs, that killed her, but the snow. And she is triumphant before her enemy's ineptitude.

The Noah boy removes the scarf from his face, and he doesn't smile, and there is genuine concern in his eyes. There is a scar on his arm.

" _Why aren't you fighting? Hii..."_

Lenalee's breath turns shallow, the edges of her consciousness blur white spots. She looks at him, and fancies saying one last ' _goodbye_ '.

Jasdero -she remembers his name- tilts his head again, his eyes widen more, and his frame crisps together. " _You should move, get up, walk around, you'll die if you don't. Hii-"_

 _I know_ , she thinks, _I know_. The saving point is long behind her, and she couldn't stand even if she wanted to. She is beyond help. And she doesn't care, and she thinks that, maybe, some part of her wants to die. Her eyes flutter at him, and the Noah looks like such a child, and she smiles more. Her voice comes out, hoarse and weak, and barely a whisper.

" _It's okay... Noah... you can kill me... I won't be mad... your earl will be so proud of you for killing an exorcist... won't he? You'll be able to brag to the Noahs that you killed me… Right... sweety?"_

He is silent. Horrified.

Her eyes roll back to her head, and she no longer has the strength to keep them opened. Her head rest in her snowy pillow, her mouth open for the cold to enter her. She's glad he's there, she needs a witness to her life, a witness to her death. It is an honor between them, she thinks, and she feels that thanks to him, him being there in her final moments, she will never have truly died.

"Tell my brother." She croaks as her last words, "that I am smilling..."

The Noah owes her at least that.

The look that is returned to her is not the one of her enemy. Jasdero's mouth splits open, his eyes water in shock, " _Why aren't you fighting?! Hii-! You'll die! You're dying!"_ He cries, and panics rushes up his body.

" _It's like Devi!"_ He cries again. " _He's hurt! Because of Dero! Devi is in bed and he doesn't wake up no matter how many times Dero shakes him! Dero… Dero doesn't want Devi to leave…"_

The snow next to her head squishes to a muddy mess, she hears him bend over her, his hot breath blowing the snowflakes from her cheeks, " _But Devi will wake up… Hii… Devi always wakes up… Road and Tykii said he'll make it… Hii… That he's a fighter…"_

" _Exorciste Lady is a fighter too… right?"_

 _What a strange little monster_ … Lenalee thinks. Giving her a pep talk? She feels herself floating, and feels slightly sorry for leaving so soon when she hears him crying, crying over her. Her enemy mourns her? Her death must have been gorgeous.

She wishes she could tell him she's fine, that in the end, she was always dead, ever since she was five years old.

Jasdero looks down at her body. The exorcist lay still, eyes closed delicately, peacefully. His eyes tears up with fear and revulsion. He had seen so many people dying, so many bloody death of humans and monster, but it had always been in battle.

There was something so much more violent in watching someone die so slowly... and accepting… accepting their deaths...

In the Snow.

The Snow.

The thin wind blows around them, screeching in his ear. And he thought of all the people around him that were disappearing, leaving, sleeping, dying... He didn't understand the nature of his brother's injury. He didn't know that he was suffering from a broken arm and toxicity in his blood, that kept him weak and sleepy, and that Debitto was in no real peril, wasn't going to die.

Jasdero didn't know that yet.

Now he was alone, seeing death again, and another familiar face fading before him, slowly, sleepily, on a white bed. Jasdero didn't understand why the exorcist (' _princess'_ , he remembered he and his brother had called her) was dying, he had never heard of hypothermia. People died so suddenly. One from a stupid mistake, the other... from the cold?

It left him feeling weak, vulnerable. How could they be the apostles of the real God if such innocuous elements could cause them such harm?

The snow seemed vicious to him, and it screamed all around and under him.

And her, buried in the Snow.

A silent scream.

Two gray arms shot down, gripping her sides. Lenalee jolts awake and cris, horrified. Then she feels her body press into something warm, skin on skin. And suddenly she was on fire. Her nerves exploding with sensation, her synapses firing off in all directions, her breath caught in her throat.

She looks up, weakly. The Noah was trying to warm her shoulders, rubbing his arms along hers. He blew on her face, wriggled out of his west on draped in on over her shoulders.

He rubbed her fingers between his hands and felt something break inside him when they shine blue with frost.

His lips trembled, "I don't know what to do…" He whispered, 'I don't know what to do… Devvviiii I don't know what to do!"

Her head lay on his shoulders. She feels him -everything- around her. From the prickling blow of his breath to the heartbeat of the wind. Her eyes trail to the ground, to the indentation left by her body.

In the Snow.

Jasdero's laments stops when he feels a pinch in his abdomen. Lenalee raises her lips to his ears, her whispers so soft it thunders in the stillness of the cold.

"Thank you... Jasdero... thanks you... It's funny… but I realised, in the moment of my death, what it means to be living."

Her body goes limp. The thin snow rains upon the charred earth. The word 'death' rattles in his child's mind.

And he cries.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

She wakes up later, in a purple room, next to a fireplace. With pain in her chest and boiling blood in her fingers.

How was she alive?

Road was there.

"You're awake?"

She seemed angry.

"How…?"

"Then get out."

"Why did you…"

"It was Jasdero. Don't tell anyone okay? It's our secret, between you, me and Jasdero."

"... Thank you…"

"Don't thank me, just get out."

She gets up, still slightly weak, and finds a large fur coat next to her. Road sighs.

"No one wants to think that the snow can kill you, it's such a violent things… such a vicious thing… you've been gone for two days, you know? You were practically blue."

"Is Jasdero…?"

"Back at our base. Devitto woke up, and they are celebrating with the akumas."

"Ah."

"We'll meet again, on the battlefield. Don't worry, that's the way we should die, on the battlefield, right?"

Lenalee agrees.

She leaves.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**

 **Reviews are always appreciated.**


End file.
